This is a tuna steak. Raw. In front of a building in China. I did it only for aesthetic reasons. Don’t you get that? Loving the colors.The photographer who painstakingly took these pictures for my records knew it was a tuna steak. I don’t think I would know that.

He is a gourmet cook and therefore probably has it cooked on the grill or some other luxurious way. And doesn’t think of tuna the way I do. In a can or presented in the form of an ice cream scooped mold on a lettuce leaf.

I am highly impressed with people who cook. I used to cook. I made desserts from Northern Italy and I stuffed curried mashed potatoes into eggplant skins. I used to make my own spaghetti sauce and not ever used sauce in a bottle. (I think pasta companies put that stuff in see-through jars so we can see the finished product is not corrosive.)

Cooking used to be an elegant expression of myself. Since our daughter came into our lives, and the pediatrician told me, a shocked vegetarian, to feed her Gerber’s veal and lamb in a jar, we eat things I never would have begun to eat. Meatloaf and spaghettios. Granola bars and Nutella. Nuggets. Corn dogs. Even sloppy joes. On white bread buns.

Now that I am gluten free and our daughter is going off to college, I think I am easing back to more culinary ways.